The American Indians do not believe the Sun to be any bigger than it appears to the naked eye. Conversing with the Chikkàsah archi-magus, or high-priest, about that luminary, he told me, “it might possibly be as broad and round as his winter-house; but he thought it could not well exceed it.” We cannot be surprised at the stupidity of the Americans in this respect, when we consider the gross ignorance which now prevails among the general part of the Jews, not only of the whole system of nature, but of the essential meaning of their own religious ceremonies, received from the Divine Majesty. {19} —And also when we reflect, that the very learned, and most polite of the ancient Romans, believed (not by any new-invented mythology of their own) that the sun was drawn round the earth in a chariot. Their philosophic system was not very dissimilar to that of the wild Americans; for Cicero tells us, Epicurus thought the sun to be less than it appeared to the eye. And Lucretius says, Tantillus ille sol, “a diminutive thing.” And, if the Israelites had not at one time thought the sun a portable god, they would not have thought of a chariot for it. This they derived from the neighbouring heathen; for we are told, that they had an house of the sun, where they danced in honour of him, in circuits, and had consecrated spherical figures; and that they, likewise, built a temple to it; for “they purified and sanctified themselves in the gardens, behind the house, or temple of Achad.” In Isa. xvii. 8, we find they had sun-images, which the Hebrews called chummanim, made to represent the sun, or for the honour and worship of it: and the Egyptians met yearly to worship in the temple of Beth-Shemesh, a house dedicated to the sun. Most part of the old heathens adored all the celestial orbs, especially the sun; probably they first imagined its enlivening rays immediately issued from the holy fire, light, and spirit, who either resided in, or was the identical sun. That idolatrous ceremony of the Jews, Josiah utterly abolished about 640 years before our Christian æra. The sacred text says, “He took away the horses, which the kings of Judah had given to the sun, and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.” At Rhodes, a neighbouring island to Judæa, they consecrated chariots to the sun, on account of his glorious splendour and benign qualities. Macrobius tells us, that the Assyrians worshipped Adad, or Achad, an idol of the sun; and Strabo acquaints us, the Arabians paid divine homage to the sun, &c. But the Indian Americans pay only a civil regard to the sun: and the more intelligent sort of them believe, that all the luminaries of the heavens are moved by the strong fixt laws of the great Author of nature.

In 2 Kings xvii. 30, we read that the men of Babylon built Succoth-Benoth, “tents for young women;” having consecrated a temple to Venus, they fixed tents round it, where young women prostituted themselves in honour of the goddess. Herodotus, and other authors, are also sufficient witnesses on this point. Now, were the Americans originally heathens, or not of Israel, when they wandered there from captivity, in quest of {20} liberty, or on any other accidental account, that vicious precedent was so well calculated for America, where every place was a thick arbour, it is very improbable they should have discontinued it: But they are the very reverse. To commit such acts of pollution, while they are performing any of their religious ceremonies, is deemed so provoking an impiety, as to occasion even the supposed sinner to be excluded from all religious communion with the rest of the people. Or even was a man known to have gone in to his own wife, during the time of their fastings, purifications, &c. he would also be separated from them. There is this wide difference between the impure and obscene religious ceremonies of the ancient heathens, and the yet penal, and strict purity of the natives of America.

The heathens chose such gods, as were most suitable to their inclinations, and the situation of their country. The warlike Greeks and Romans worshipped Mars the god of war; and the savage and more bloody Scythians deified the Sword. The neighbouring heathens round Judæa, each built a temple to the supposed god that presided over their land. Rimmon, was the Syrian god of pomegranates: and the Philistines, likewise, erected a temple to Dagon, who had first taught them the use of wheat; which the Greeks and Romans changed into Ceres, the goddess of corn, from the Hebrew, Geres, which signifies grain. But the red Americans firmly believe, that their war-captains, and their reputed prophets, gain success over their enemies, and bring on seasonable rains, by the immediate reflection of the divine fire, co-operating with them.

We are informed by Cicero, that the maritime Sidonians adored fishes: and by the fragment of Sanchoniathon, that the Tyrians worshipped the element of fire, and the ærial wind, as gods:—probably having forgotten that the first and last names of the three celestial cherubic emblems, only typified the deity. Ancient history informs us, that Zoroaster, who lived An. M. 3480, made light the emblem of good, and darkness the symbol of evil—he taught an abhorrence of images, and instructed his pupils to worship God, under the figurative likeness of fire: but he asserted two contrary original principles; the one of good, and the other of evil. He allowed no temples, but enjoined sacrificing in the open air, and on the top of an hill. The ancient Persians kept up their reputed holy fire, without suffering it to be extinguished; which their pretended successors observe with the {21} strictest devotion, and affirm it has been burning, without the least intermission, several thousand years. But the Indian Americans are so far from the idolatry of the Sidonians, that they esteem fish only as they are useful to the support of human life; though one of their tribes is called the fish:—they are so far from paying any religious worship to the aerial wind, like the Tyrians, that they often call the bleak northwind, explicatively, very evil, and accursed; which they probably, would not say, if they derived the great esteem they now have for the divine fire, from the aforesaid idolatrous nations: neither would they wilfully extinguish their old fire, before the annual sacrifice is offered up, if, like the former heathens, they paid religious worship to the elementary fire; for no society of people would kill their own gods, unless the papists, who go farther, even to eat him. The Indians esteem the old year’s fire, as a most dangerous pollution, regarding only the supposed holy fire, which the archi-magus annually renews for the people.

They pay no religious worship to stocks, or stones, after the manner of the old eastern pagans; neither do they worship any kind of images whatsoever.[[16]] And it deserves our notice, in a very particular manner, to invalidate the idle dreams of the jesuitical fry of South-America, that none of all the various nations, from Hudson’s Bay to the Missisippi, has ever been known, by our trading people, to attempt to make any image of the great Divine Being, whom they worship. This is consonant to the Jewish observance of the second commandment, and directly contrary to the usage of all the ancient heathen world, who made corporeal representations of their deities—and their conduct, is a reproach to many reputed Christian temples, which are littered round with a crowd of ridiculous figures to represent God, spurious angels, pretended saints, and notable villains.

The sacred penmen, and prophane writers, assure us that the ancient heathens had lascivious gods, particularly מפלצת, 2 Chron. xv. 16, which was the abominable Priapus. But I never heard that any of our North-American Indians had images of any kind. There is a carved human statue of wood, to which, however, they pay no religious homage: It belongs to the head war-town of the upper Muskohge country, and seems to have been originally designed to perpetuate the memory of some distinguished hero, who deserved well of his country; for, when their cusseena, or bitter, black drink[[17]] is about to {22} be drank in the synedrion, they frequently, on common occasions, will bring it there, and honour it with the first conch-shell-full, by the hand of the chief religious attendant: and then they return it to its former place. It is observable, that the same beloved waiter, or holy attendant, and his co-adjutant, equally observe the same ceremony to every person of reputed merit, in that quadrangular place. When I past[past] that way, circumstances did not allow me to view this singular figure; but I am assured by several of the traders, who have frequently seen it, that the carving is modest, and very neatly finished, not unworthy of a modern civilized artist. As no body of people we are acquainted with, have, in general, so great a share of strong natural parts as those savages, we may with a great deal of probability suppose, that their tradition of the second commandment, prevented them from having one, not to say the same plentiful variety of images, or idols, as have the popish countries.

Notwithstanding they are all degenerating apace, on account of their great intercourse with foreigners, and other concurring causes; I well remember, that, in the year 1746, one of the upper towns of the aforesaid Muskohge, was so exceedingly exasperated against some of our Chikkasah traders, for having, when in their cups, forcibly viewed the nakedness of one of their women, (who was reputed to be an hermaphrodite) that they were on the point of putting them to death, according to one of their old laws against crimes of that kind.—But several of us, assisted by some of the Koosah town, rescued them from their just demerit. Connecting together these particulars, we can scarcely desire a stronger proof, that they have not been idolaters, since they first came to America; much less, that they erected, and worshipped any such lascivious and obscene idols, as the heathens above recited.

The Sidonians and Philistines worshipped Ashtaroth, in the figure of the celestial luminaries; or, according to others, in the form of a sheep: but the Americans pay the former, only, a civil regard, because of the beneficial influence with which the deity hath impressed them. And they reckon sheep as despicable and helpless, and apply the name to persons in that predicament, although a ram was the animal emblem of power, with the ancient eastern heathens. The Indians sometimes call a nasty fellow, Chookphe {23} kussooma, “a stinking sheep,” and “a goat.” And yet a goat was one of the Egyptian deities; as likewise were all the creatures that bore wool; on which account, the sacred writers frequently term idols, “the hairy.” The despicable idea which the Indians affix to the species, shews they neither use it as a divine symbol, nor have a desire of being named Dorcas, which, with the Hebrews, is a proper name, expressive of a wild she goat. I shall subjoin here, with regard to Ashtaroth, or Astarte, that though the ancients believed their deities to be immortal, yet they made to themselves both male and female gods, and, by that means, Astarte, and others, are of the fæminine gender. Trismegistus too, and the Platonics, affirmed there was deus masculo-fæmineus; though different sexes were needful for the procreation of human beings.

Instead of consulting such as the heathen oracles—or the Teraphim—the Dii Penates—or Dii Lares, of the ancients, concerning future contingencies, the Indians only pretend to divine from their dreams; which may proceed from the tradition they still retain of the knowledge their ancestors obtained from heaven, in visions of the night, Job xxxiii. “God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.” When we consider how well stocked with gods, all the neighbouring nations of Judæa were; especially the maritime powers, such as Tyre and Sidon, Carthage and Egypt, which continually brought home foreign gods, and entered them into their own Palladia; and that these Americans are utterly ignorant both of the gods and their worship, it proves, with sufficient evidence, that the gentlemen, who trace them from either of those states, only perplex themselves in wild theory, without entering into the merits of the question.

As the bull was the first terrestrial cherubic emblem, denoting fire, the ancient Egyptians, in length of time, worshipped Apis, Serapis, or Osiris, under the form of an ox; but, when he grew old, they drowned him, and lamented his death in a mourning habit; which occasioned a philosopher thus to jest them, Si Dii sunt, cur plangitis? Si mortui, cur adoratis? “If they be gods, why do you weep for them? And, if they are dead, why do you worship them?” A bull, ox, cow, or calf, was the favourite deity of {24} the ancient idolaters. Even when Yohewah was conducting Israel in the wilderness, Aaron was forced to allow them a golden calf, according to the usage of the Egyptians: and at the defection of the ten tribes, they worshipped before the emblematical images of two calves, through the policy of Jeroboam. The Troglodites used to strangle their aged, with a cow’s tail: and some of the East-Indians are said to fancy they shall be happy, by holding a cow’s tail in their hand when dying: others imagine the Ganges to wash away all their crimes and pollution. The Indian Americans, on the contrary, though they derive the name of cattle from part of the divine essential name, (as shall be elsewhere observed) and use the name of a buffalo as a war appellative, and the name of a tribe; yet their regard to them, centres only in their usefulness for the support of human life: and they believe they can perform their religious ablutions and purifications, in any deep clean water.